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From: RobertB 

In article ,
 "Rich Gauszka"  wrote:

> "RobertB"  wrote in message
> news:missinglink-B91E11.10461620122006{at}news.barkto.com...
> > In article ,
> > "Rich Gauszka"  wrote:
> >
> >> from the assembly line to the office staff -
> >>
> >> http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/12/19/miniford/index.php
> >> If you've driven a Ford lately, chances are a Mac mini deserves some of
> >> the
> >> credit. Ford Motor's contractor has installed the Apple-made
computers in
> >> two of the automaker's northern Indiana factories as part of
a sequencing
> >> solution to boost assembly line efficiency.
> >>
> >> "Mac minis are cost effective and they are reliable
machines," said
> >> Jonathan
> >> Schalliol, vice president of business development and chief financial
> >> officer of Information in Place. The Bloomington, Ind.-based company is
> >> responsible for the development and installation of the Mac minis in
> >> Ford's
> >> plants. "We did a lot of research and determined they
were the best
> >> deal."
> >>
> >> ...
> >>
> >> A total of 14 Mac minis running on Intel Core Solo chips have been
> >> operational at the plants since early November, helping Ford
assemble 800
> >> cars a day. So far, everything is working perfectly, according to
> >> Schalliol.
> >>
> >> As a result of the testing to put this project together, Schalliol said
> >> most
> >> of the people at his company, including the office staff, are now using
> >> Macs. For those that need Windows, the company has purchased the
> >> Parallels
> >> Desktop for Mac virtualization software.
> >>
> >> Ford is not the only company to benefit from the research and
development
> >> that Information in Place has done. Schalliol said his company plans to
> >> bring the hardware/software combination to other outfits in the next
> >> year.
> >
> > I wonder what they're using them for (at Ford, that is)? I would have
> > thought they used PLCs on the assembly line.
>
> sequencing - I didn't include the entire article - from the link
> ----
> Information in Place's Mac-based system aims to solve those problems. "The
> software [called PickIT] will tell the workers if they are inserting the
> wrong part or if they don"t follow the sequence," Schalliol
said. "Each Mac
> mini has a touchscreen, which is used to default past a missing part if it's
> not available-that is then recorded and labeled to come back to at a later
> date."

Are they running OS X on them or something else? If it's a db application,
Filemaker is native OS X.

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